After 18 hours stuck in his capsized yacht 200 miles west of the notorious Cape Horn, a French yachtsman was rescued tonight after a calculated gamble in which he braved near-freezing waters and 12ft waves to swim to safety.

Less than an hour before, organisers of the Vendée Globe round-the-world race for solo sailors, had feared for the life of Jean Le Cam, a charismatic hero of French sailing.

Race organisers had called on Chile’s maritime search-and-rescue service to arrange a helicopter drop of two divers. A rescue tug had set out earlier, but was not due on the scene until 6am today because of the harsh conditions. Communication with Le Cam had been limited to a number of emergency signals and some shouting from his upturned 60ft yacht, VM Materiaux.

Getting as close as he dared in his yacht PRB, Vincent Riou, a rival French sailor, had said he heard Le Cam saying he was cold, which had triggered the organisers’ fears. Armel Cleac’h, another French yachtsman, on Brit Air, who had also diverted, described the rescue to the organisers.

“We’ve just told them [Chile] to cancel the rescue because we’ve just had word that Jean Le Cam swam out from his boat and got picked up by PRB a few minutes ago,” Julian Hocken, the deputy race director said. “Jean was wearing his survival suit. It would seem he is not injured. He was very cold – the water there is 5C to 7C – but he’s alive and he’s safe on board PRB. Vincent has confirmed that all rescue operations can stand down. He says Jean is in a good physical and mental state.

“We think Riou might have damaged an outrigger in the rescue so apparently the two of them were working away on the deck. They are sailing the boat to shore. They are about 120 miles from the coast of Chile.” The rescue was the second of this year’s race, after another Frenchman, Yann Elies, was saved by an Australian frigate, a thousand miles south of Australia, having broken his thigh bone. But the images of Le Cam’s overturned boat with the sails eerily floating underwater evoke memories of the 1996-97 race when there were three rescues of the overturned boats of Tony Bullimore, Thierry Dubois and Raphael Dinelli. Le Cam became the 17th of the 30 skippers who left Les Sables d’Olonne 58 days ago to be forced to abandon the race.

Several have been dismasted, but Le Cam lost his keel bulb, where about a third of the boat’s 8½ tonnes resides. The lead keel allows boats to self-right even if they are knocked sideways to 130 degrees. All competing boats are required to have six watertight bulkheads in order to keep the boat afloat even with compartments flooded. The extra problem for Le Cam was that both his escape hatches, including the one at the stern of the boat for just this eventuality, were under water. This was presumably because he had loaded his water ballast and gear at the stern for extra stability while hurtling across the Southern Ocean.

Le Cam had shown his prowess in this race, managing to compete against a fleet of new boats, despite having the one he raced in four years ago. As he approached the last and most forbidding of the three capes Vendée sailors must round, Le Cam was lying third, 400 miles behind the leaders, with 7,500 miles to the finish.

But just past midnight he communicated to his team that he thought he was going to capsize. Strange sounds followed and the satellite phone was cut. An oil tanker diverted and Le Cam appeared to answer its foghorn, by setting off his second emergency beacon. Riou was on the scene 13 hours later and Le Cam had pushed a small flag out of the upturned hull.

Such rescues are the stuff of legend in the Vendée Globe. The race is followed avidly in France. Le Cam became a huge star during his first Vendée four years ago and there is some harmony that it is Riou that rescued him. The two battled each other for 25,000 miles then, with Le Cam finishing just seven hours behind Riou, the winner, after 87 days.